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Blizzard actually made the starting blue craftable gear accessible and cheap to make; pieces go for 300-500g on my server, and it really helped since I was a couple of weeks behind in terms of gear.
Not only is it accessible and cheap to make (though you need Spirits of Harmony if you want to make them yourself), these also work in PvE too, due to PvP stats being off-budget. 450 is enough for Heroic Dungeons.
No more are you Qing up for Normals with green quested crap until you can do Heroics; you can just get your full set of Contender's and be ready to go.
Also, I
hated some of the materials required in Cataclysm to make the armor. Elementium Bars? That's not too bad. 10 freaking volatile fire per piece of plate armor? Eh, okay... so the alchemists get to bend me over, again.
Leather? Yup, 10 volatiles. The alchemists have fun with me again.
Mail? OMG WHAT IS THIS!? 10 Dragonscales per!? When there's only ONE place in the entire game to get dragonscales at any decent rate!? Arrrrrrrrgh. Oh, and I STILL need 10 volatiles per.
Cloth? GAAAAAAH...... not only do I need 10 volatiles per, but I also need
two and a half stacks of a cloth that has a ridiculously rare drop rate.
I hated how you had to have 2-3 alchemists in Cata to get anything done, otherwise you get bent over at the AH. And even then you had to wait several days before you had enough volatiles transmuted to be able to make anything.
So now in MoP, once you get past the annoying "Need 8 whole spirits" part, you can make good level 90 armor to start with. And if they do the same thing they did in Cataclysm; when Season 13 comes out, those recipes should auto-update to the new season which means you make
even better armor with those same patterns (in Cataclysm, it started out 339, then changed to 358 and then ended at 377 IIRC).